


Year Ten

by ama



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Domestic, Established Relationship, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-14 06:41:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4554588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ama/pseuds/ama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chuck and Ron have been celebrating their wedding anniversary for nine years now. A few days before their tenth, Lipton drops a bomb.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Year Ten

**Author's Note:**

> So I've decided that this ship deserves like 500 more fics than it has, and here I am, doing my bit. This doesn't quite go into the details of their relationship as much as I wanted to, but antiquecompass/rivlee sent me a prompt based on a tumblr post and it fit so well that I couldn't resist.

“Thanks again for having me this week, guys,” Lipton said. He sat down on the couch and immediately had a lapful of dog; Sharon the bulldog fit quite comfortably, but Laura the Belgian shepherd not so much. Chuck hauled her off and she settled her head on his thigh instead.

“Don’t mention it,” Ron said, entering the room with three bottles of hard cider, which he distributed. “I still can’t believe you got permission from Faith and all the kids.”

“Don’t,” Chuck said reprovingly, elbowing him in the ribs, but Lipton only grinned.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” he laughed. “I don’t begrudge you your double-income-no-kids lifestyle. Tell you the truth, I miss the rugrats already.”

As he spoke, he looked around the house curiously. He had flown in late last night and then immediately been up and about the next day to attend one of the dozen meetings his boss had scheduled for him this week. It was only now that he could appreciate how much this house had changed in the five years since he had been in it. It was difficult for him to visit Chuck and Ron in San Francisco; getting two adults and three kids under ten onto a plane and then into a hotel room was no mean feat, and he had been reluctant to leave his wife home alone when they had still had kids who weren’t in school. It was far easier for the two men to visit West Virginia instead, when they were on their weekly cycle of the East Coast. Christmas with Ron’s parents in Boston, a few days with Dick and Nixon (and usually Harry and Kitty) in New Jersey, and then a few days around New Year’s in Huntington. It was a good system.

On the other hand, it was almost worth it to see that--despite all their protestations that it would never happen--Chuck and Ron had thoroughly settled into almost-middle-aged married homebodiness. They had redecorated, knocking down some walls to open up the space and doing up the living room in a tasteful neutral style. They had a wine rack, a food processor, a grocery list taped to the fridge, and a coffee table on which they had placed two hardcover books just for show. They even had a formal portrait of themselves on the mantelpiece--although, admittedly, if one looked at the informal pictures surrounding it, one might get a hint of their former lifestyle. From where he was sitting he could see at least one picture of Ron in his uniform and another that appeared to be a hospital selfie… But overall, Lipton was rather impressed.

Another man might even be called “smug.”

“I’ll get out of the way for your anniversary, of course,” he said with a faintly teasing grin. “It’s your tenth, isn’t it?”

“Oh, are you staying that long?” Chuck asked, surprised. Lipton was confused.

“Yes. I did tell you my flight was Sunday, right? Sunday at about 8pm?”

“Yes. This Sunday.”

“Yeah.” There was a long pause, and Lipton’s eyebrows rose. “And your anniversary is this Saturday, the twenty-third.”

Ron and Chuck were immediately released from their confusion, and they chuckled. Laura, unable to laugh herself, wagged her tail lazily in pleasure.

“You’re a week off, Lip,” Ron said cheerfully. “Our anniversary is next Saturday. The thirtieth.”

Lipton stared at them for a moment without speaking. Then he sighed heavily and leaned forward—Sharon grumbled—and set down his cider on the coffee table. So much for being impressed. He sat back and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Ron, your anniversary is on the twenty-third.”

Ron froze for a brief moment and glanced at Chuck, who shook his head reassuringly.

“No it’s not,” he maintained. “Our wedding day was January 30th, 2005. Or at least, that was our reception date. You’re not thinking of the legal date, are you, in Boston? That wasn’t in January, it was in December. I’m not sure of the exact date, but it might have been the twenty-third…”

“No, I’m talking about the second ceremony and the reception, here, in California, that I was best man for, that took place on January 23rd, 2005.”

“For Christ’s sake, Carwood!” Ron cried impatiently. “We’ve been celebrating our anniversary for nine years, I think we know the date of it!”

Lipton sighed again, running his hand absently down Sharon’s back, and began to talk in an annoyingly patient, slow voice—the kind of voice that he used with his six-year-old all the time.

“Okay, let’s think back for a minute. It’s May 2004. The Massachusetts court upholds the gay marriage ruling two weeks before you, Ron, had to go to Germany for six months and you decided that proposing before you left was a good decision—”

“Which it was,” Chuck interrupted faithfully.

“—and then you, Chuck, decided that the only venue worthy of hosting the reception was that cabin in the woods that was going to be torn down in eight months—”

“Only place for it, obviously,” Ron agreed.

“—which, given their availability, left exactly one date in late January available. The time difference between Germany and here made it virtually impossible for Ron to do most of the actual work of planning, and Chuck you were absolutely terrible at it because you’re colorblind and have the worst memory for names of anyone I’ve ever met. So we all agreed, during the engagement and during the wedding itself, that my help was literally the only thing that kept everything from turning into a disaster on a monumental scale. Correct?”

A reluctant mumble of “correct” was the only response.

“That’s what I thought. I was the one who actually called and booked the florist, the caterer, the DJ, and the bartender, not to mention negotiating with the tailors and designing the invitations and hunting down the R.S.V.Ps. And all of this had to happen by _January twenty-third_.”

“It was the fucking thirtieth—”

“Look!” Chuck said triumphantly, holding up his phone. “Look, it’s on Facebook. Under life events, you click ‘Married Ron Speirs’ and there, it brings up our picture and the date. January thirtieth.”

“Thank you!” Ron crowed, planting a kiss on his cheek. "See, this is why we got married in the first place, because we're resourceful and know how to prove people wrong. Perfect match."

Lipton was not perturbed.

“Let me see that,” he said, taking the outstretched phone. He swiped at it a few times and gave it back. “Yes, that would be good proof, except you never listed your wedding date on Facebook. That’s just the date you changed your relationship status. Look.”

He stood up and sat next to them on the couch, prompting an outcry from Sharon, who then hopped over and stood on Chuck’s lap, demanding attention. Lipton pulled up Facebook on his phone and demonstrated for them.

“See, look, this is my mom’s page. I’ll click the same things you did—and the date there is May 15th, 2011, which is the day she joined Facebook and listed my dad as her husband. So if it’s listed as the 30th on your Facebook, I’m guessing that means you just didn’t go on Facebook during the week you were on your honeymoon.”

Chuck, who knew this to be true, coughed in embarrassment, and Ron, who was thinking back to their first anniversary when (used to celebrating the beginning of their relationship in April) he had thought he would certainly forget the day and checked Facebook for reassurance, felt a sense of foreboding rise in his stomach.

“I don’t—there’s no way,” he said, shaking his head. “We’ve been celebrating our wedding anniversary on the second to last day of January for _nine years_.”

“Where’s the invitation?”

“Invitation?”

“Yes, the invitation. Our gift to you guys was a contribution to your honeymoon fund and a framed copy of one of the leftover invitations. You were meant to display it,” he said with a small, rueful smile, and they had the decency to look embarrassed.

“I think—it’s in the study,” Chuck said hesitantly. “Yes—because that used to be the guest bedroom until we moved things around. It’s on the wall in the study.”

“Fine, let’s settle this.”

Ron stood and went upstairs, and there as an awkward pause in the living room. Laura curled up in Ron’s seat and Chuck scratched her behind the ear absently. Lipton took up his cider bottle again and drained it; he looked remarkably not annoyed by the controversy, just a tiny bit exasperated and incredibly amused.

“So do you have any plans for the thirtieth?” he asked innocently.

“Hm? Oh yeah. My parents are taking us out to dinner and a concert—and don’t tell him, it’s a surprise, but his parents are flying in, too.”

“That’s nice.”

“Yeah. And I think afterwards he’s planning on taking some champagne and the dogs and heading up the Twin Peaks. It’s supposed to be a surprise, of course, but that was what we did the night before our wedding, so…”

They lapsed again into silence, and Chuck began to get apprehensive. Ron had been upstairs for a very long time…

Finally they heard slow footsteps on the stairs, and turned to see Ron descending with a black frame in his hand and a completely blank look on his face. He didn’t say anything, and neither man asked. Ron took his seat on the couch again, shoving the dog away so he could squish in. He was silent for another minute, and if there had been any doubt, it existed no longer; he hated to lose, and the expression on his face was undoubtedly the expression of a man who was trying desperately to avoid admitting that he lost.

“Technically,” he said slowly, “our anniversary is December-whatever 2004.”

“Oh my god,” Chuck mumbled, lifting a hand to his face, and Lipton smiled.

“I’m glad to see you guys haven’t changed.”

 


End file.
